The role is so glorious that he almost breaks character when he begins quaking in earnest.

Treinen was hardly quaking in his cleats, despite the fine mess he had gotten himself into.

Seismologists in the region must have been alarmed by the quaking activity that occurred at Wednesday’s opening when Betts heaved all her might into Evillene’s “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News.”

Seattle-based artist and journalist Jeff Rice recorded the sounds for this multimedia installation in Pando, a gigantic grove of interconnected quaking aspen trees in Utah — and one of the world’s largest single organisms.

Often dismissed with the language of a fever dream — La La Land, lotus eaters, blah blah blah — the landscape I encountered, prone to burning and to quaking, existed instead in a constant state of emergence.